Crash

I finally watched this movie over the weekend. I've been hearing what a "life-changing" movie it is with only one dissenting opinion - Jim's. So I was really curious about this film. I hated it. I forced myself to sit through the entire thing even after the first 20 minutes made me want to run. Here is the problem I had with this movie. There may be more.

In general, films about social issues are either really good or really bad. Great directors and writers will lead you to a conclusion about the issue at hand without explicitly telling you what you should think. When you are told what to think, then the director and writer have thrown objectivity out the window and started lecturing about their own moralistic agenda. A good director/writer will make a film about racism impartially and the viewer will draw his own conclusion. Hopefully that it is bad and the result of ignorance and hatred, but that is me lecturing. Regardless, the audience seeing this type of film is usually predisposed to that point of view.

In the case of Crash, Paul Haggis doesn't trust either the viewer's intelligence or his own abilities, so he compiles a series of bigoted, nasty people of different races all hating on everyone not like them to make sure he has convinced you of just how bad things have become in America since 9/11. The characters are so over the top and overblown in their hatred of stereotypes (all the while voicing their own stereotypes)that the movie becomes a satire of itself. Unfortunately, this satire is completely unintended and it makes a really bad film.